


go down to the netherworld (plant grapes)

by sodiumflare



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Dinosaurs, Gen, also some Neuromancer, basically there's a lot of guesswork happening here, discussion of an apocalypse, megafauna (briefly), vaguely recalled bible, vaguely recalled history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 17:52:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5014300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sodiumflare/pseuds/sodiumflare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You've never met a machine you didn't love, from the the light switch in your bedroom to the engine in your father's truck to the first motherboard you ever laid hands on, but this might be the machine you love the most.</p><p>There's an outside possibility it loves you back, in whatever way it can. However it can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	go down to the netherworld (plant grapes)

Before you built the machine, you saw it in a dream: intact and whole and miraculous, a spider web made of a snowflake lattice, fractals spiraling into the infinite horizon that, in your dreams, you could see the end of.

It's impossible, of course, but what are dreams for, if not the impossible?

Gibson wrote _Neuromancer_ without ever having seen a computer, described console cowboys and black ice out of whole digital cloth, was horrified when he first saw a real computer, with all its whirling, clanking parts.

You've never met a machine you didn't love, from the the light switch in your bedroom to the engine in your father's truck to the first motherboard you ever laid hands on, but this might be the machine you love the most.

There's an outside possibility it loves you back, in whatever way it can. However it can.

\--

You don't dream in numbers anymore. Or rather, you do: but not in code. In digits spit out like bullets from a gun, like meteors from the sky, like a hailstorm. There is no shelter. There is nowhere to go.

You think of the dinosaurs sometimes. When the end came, did they know? When that impact raised the mountains and boiled the seas, were they aware that their epoch was over? The end of the dinosaurs cleared the way for the rise of the mammals, and rise they did, at first, with gusto, in the newly oxygen-rich atmosphere: guinea pigs the size of wheelbarrows, dogs the size of horses. Nature abhors a vacuum, and fills them with gusto.

If the machine is alone, it will not be for long.

Is the world moving on without you? Will a time come when those selected are the only ones left?

\--

You have dreams, sometimes, of batting cages. Of swinging as one ball hurtles at you, and another, and another. They never stop. You never stop. When you awake you are soaked with sweat, and your shoulders ache with a phantom pain from phantom exertion.

You flick on the monitor like you're flipping the cloth of a bird's cage, your toast rapidly cooling on your pate, and there's another number, waiting for you.

\--

You think of Noah, sometimes, loading animals onto the ark. Not for the religiosity of it but for the thought experiment. How could one pick just two of every species? Which two, and why? On what basis? After months at sea, in a cramped, dark boat, smelling of hay and shit and unwashed bodies, did any of them ever look at - say - a particular camel, and think, "I wish I'd gone with another one"? What if one died? What if there's just been one howler monkey or terrier or tarantula?

You should be dead. All of you. And yet you're alive, and so are so many others, another number a day, throwing starfish to safety because they are the ones you can save. All of you. For now. 

\--

"Not everything that's broken was meant to be fixed," your father says, and you stare at your hands, at the switch, think fiercely, _We shall all be healed_.

\--

If the sky is raining fire, you have recruited the best possible team for the circumstance. The best animals for the ark. Mr. Reese and Ms. Shaw will always run into the rain of fire. Mr. Fusco will kick the rain of fire in the knees. Ms. Groves will locate a fireproof umbrella. Ms Carter would arrest the fire and read it its rights. 

You will sit there, on the other end of the phone, and gamely reassure them that it's raining.

But you weren't the one who recruited them, were you? Not really. Not in any way that matters.

\--

You have an employment contract, somewhere, that John signed. Back in the day. There's an oblique clause about time off as needed, about sick time. None of you have ever had a day off because you chose to take a day off. None of you have - 

You haven't had so much as a cold since the first number arrived. It has to be a coincidence. It has to be.

It has to be.

\--

Standing at the curb cut, overbalanced, one foot in the crosswalk, as the car sped by -

\--

When you arrive in the library, they are already assembled: Ms. Shaw is on the floor, in a tug of war with Bear in a rare playful mood. Mr. Reese is drinking gas station coffee out of a disposable cup by the window. What Ms. Groves is up to is best left unknown for the moment.

"Good morning, Finch," Mr. Reese says. "Sleep well?"

"Very well," you say. You sit. Your spine is perfectly straight. Your tea is in your saucer.

On the screen, a number.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Mountain Goats' "1 Samuel 15:23"
> 
>  
> 
> _I became a crystal healer and my ministry was to the sick_  
>  _Creeping vines would send out runners and seek me in their numbers_  
>  _I sold self-help tapes_  
>  _Go down to the netherworld, plant grapes_


End file.
